Not Dead After All
by mak5258
Summary: He thought he would die but she saved him, and then they finally kissed. Rating is for language.


He'd thought that he'd died. He'd felt himself easing away, felt it all disconnecting. Then blackness.

Yet here he was. Still in the Shrieking Shack, still bleeding. He knew he wasn't going to die because he hurt so badly. If he was dying, the pain would be fading.

 _Damn_.

He'd been half prepared for this. He had antivenin, Blood Replenishing Potion. He had two dozen other potentially useful potions, too. He began pulling vials out of his pockets, searching for the little blue one with the red wax sealing it. There was blood on his hands, coating his fingers, making everything slippery.

"Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck."

"Oh, thank God!"

And then he wasn't alone. It was Granger. Of course it bloody was—it was always Granger.

She picked up one of the potions that had skittered away across the floor, Vanishing the red wax with a tap of her wand and sluicing the runny contents across his neck. She conjured a cloth and wiped the blood away. It hurt like hell; she wasn't particularly gentle.

He found the long, narrow, cylindrical glass, flat-bottomed and full of viscous red. Blood Replenishing Potion. It tasted coppery. He drank the whole thing, three full doses, and hoped it would be enough.

"You're alive," Granger said. She sat back from him and he saw that she didn't have the little blue vial of antivenin in her hand, but a bulbous jar of Dittany with a dropper top. He reached up and touched his neck warily, probing the swollen and achy area cautiously. There were four rough, raised lines, but he wasn't bleeding anymore. "You'll live."

And then she was sobbing, and she leaned down and peppered his face with kisses.

It took him a long moment to catch up.

He wasn't going to die.

He wasn't dying.

He'd survived the return of the Dark Lord.

He grabbed her, tangled his fingers in her wild hair, and kissed her.

He couldn't remember the last time he'd kissed a woman like this. Hell, he couldn't remember the last time he'd kissed a woman like anything. And she was kissing him back. She met his tongue taste for taste, leaning down over him, hands above his shoulders propping her up.

"I love you."

He'd been sitting on that one for months, almost a year. He'd gotten very drunk when he'd first realized it, because she'd been his student and it was NOT OKAY, in big bold letters and underlined about twelve times. And then he'd killed Dumbledore and she'd been gone; he hadn't seen her in almost a full year. He'd fucking missed her.

She stared at him, stunned. He kissed her again and it brought her back to life. She collapsed into him, arms holding him painfully tight, weeping.

"I thought you'd died," she murmured. "I thought I watched your fucking life-blood leak out all over the damn dusty floorboards."

He blinked. That… He'd told her he loved her, and she'd gone back to—

"I love you, too, you ass," she snarled at him. "Don't you _ever_ fucking dare do that again. What the hell would I do if you died!"

"Probably marry a Weasley, have wildly successful career, a couple kids—" She bit his earlobe. Not particularly gently, either. "Fuck!"

"I kissed Ron. What do you say to that?"

Rage.

He didn't have anything to say to that. His whole body felt like it was on fire; blood roaring through his veins. He was _furious_ like he hadn't been since Dumbledore had told him that Harry Potter had been raised up for the slaughter.

"I'll fucking disembowel him. That's what I say to that," he growled. She was still on top of him, but she needed to get off. He had to go find Ron Fucking Weasley and rip his testicles off.

She smiled. It was distracting.

"I don't want to marry Ron, have a wildly successful career and a couple kids."

He blinked, because two of those sounded like really good ideas.

"I don't care if we get married or not. And I don't care if we have kids or not. And I don't even really care about a career at the moment." She grabbed him by the lapels and made him look at her. All he could see was her. "I just want to be with _you_. I want to be wherever you are. The rest we can figure out later."

He kissed her. He wanted to fuck her, but he was exhausted. The initial rush from the Blood Replenishing Potion had dimmed, leaving him weak and tired. He kissed her anyway, clutching her to him when he had to stop to breathe. She held onto him just as tightly.

"Why did you kiss him?" he asked, because that weak little part of him at the back of his head wouldn't let it go.

" _He_ kissed _me_ actually," she murmured. She was nestled comfortably into his side, and when she spoke he could feel her lips ghost across the soft spot just below his new scars. "A mad-dash celebrating the end of it."

"And you kissed him back."

"Not really."

"You didn't hit him, though."

"Was I supposed to?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

" _Why_?" He tried to sit up, but he was too tired and she was mostly laying on top of him.

"Yes, why." She shifted, resting her chin on his shoulder and looking up at him. He turned his head so that he could look back at her, eyes narrowed. "Why would I hit him? He didn't do anything wrong."

"Didn't—" He growled, finding the wherewithal to turn over so that she was caged beneath his body. "Granger, you are _mine_. He has no business looking at you let alone bludgering kissing you."

"How was I supposed to know that?"

He stared at her. How was she supposed to know that?

How indeed.

Aside from her being the only one who'd known about what Dumbledore had asked him to do. Aside from the hours they'd spent alone in shitty little rooms brewing for the Order, talking about nothing and everything—and he'd never done that with _anybody_ before.

"You never once gave me any sign that you even _liked_ me," Granger said. "You barely tolerated me. I sat there thinking I was the world's biggest idiot, falling for you when you didn't give a shit. Your student, completely impossible, inappropriate, impractical." She sighed, reaching up and stroking his face. "You're the bravest man I ever met and I fell in love with you and it fucking sucked because you were doing it all for Lily Evans and I was just a pair of steady hands—"

"I've been fighting for _you_ since before Dumbledore asked me to kill him." His arms were tired; he was shaking as he supported himself over her. "Do you know how sick that is?"

"Sick?"

"You were a child in my care." When he'd realized he thought of her as a person instead of a student, it hadn't been the warning flag it should've been. When he'd realized he hadn't thought of her as a person, he'd thought of her as _the_ person, it hadn't been the warning flag it should've been. "I spent most of our time brewing wondering what your cunt would taste like."

That had been the first time he'd got himself completely blitzed over Granger. A very long day at Grimmauld Place, a longer night at the trashy nameless pub in Knockturn Alley. It had been easier to snipe at her the next day with a hangover that he easily blamed on her.

"I wasn't a child."

"You were still my student."

"Nothing happened."

"But I wanted it to happen."

"But nothing did. And, for the record, I was of age the entire time we brewed together."

"You'd just finished your fifth year. You were sixteen."

"I was seventeen. I used the Time Turner third year."

His arms gave out and he collapsed onto her. She didn't seem to mind. In fact, she nestled her body around him and absorbed his fall. His face ended up buried in her hair.

"I was still lusting after a student."

"The student in question was willing and of age and completely oblivious."

"Dumbledore knew."

"How?"

"He just did."

"Did he say anything?"

"It was the way he _didn't_ say things, really. Especially when he realized I'd told you what he'd asked me to do."

"P—Snape," she said, suddenly sounding unsure. He knew she'd been about to call him 'professor,' and thought it rather made his point. He wished she wouldn't call him that, wouldn't even think of it. "Can't we just set it all aside?"

"The point I was trying to make," he said after a quiet moment in which he'd maneuvered so that they were sitting up and facing each other. His head was swimming. "Is that I'm a caveman, and I would knock you out with my club and drag you off to my cave if I could. But I can barely blink right now, let alone pound my chest."

She laughed, and reached across the small space between them to put a greasy hank of hair behind his ear.

"I'm possessive. I'm jealous. I'm insecure. I'm not particularly nice."

"I'm in love with you."

His whole body started to tremble, and he didn't think it had anything to do with the damned snake bite.

"And, to be perfectly honest, I think my kinks line up with your dominant possessive streak perfectly."

"I'm not…" He frowned. He'd spent too long around Death Eaters, watching them tie up Muggles and Muggle-borns, dominate them in every way imaginable, demean them.

"I don't mean that," she said, suddenly very close to him. She had a hand on his shoulder. "I mean that I _really_ like the idea of being _yours_. Of you being possessive of me. Nobody's ever—I'm not usually the girl that—"

He nodded. He knew exactly what she meant.

She leaned forward and pressed her forehead to his, eyes closed. He closed his eyes, too. His breathing synced up with hers.

"I'm so tired," he sighed, not opening his eyes. She drew away from him, and he missed the contact, but his eyelids were too heavy. "I'm—"

"Come on." She grabbed his arm and pulled, helping him to his feet. "We should get up to the castle."

"No!" He flinched and almost fell over.

"What? Why not?"

"I can't go back there. I don't ever want to go back there."

"You need medical attention. I can't take you St. Mungo's. Madam Pomfrey is probably the only qualified Healer who knows you're not—"

"Please don't make me go back there."

"This is insane."

She squeezed him tight to her, and then they were hurtling through the too-tight press of Apparation. He was sure he was going to vomit on arrival, but he didn't.

He clutched to her, weaving. They walked up a dim hall, got into a large elevator. They went to the top floor. She opened the door at the end of the hall with a key and a spell. He was seeing movement trails by the time they made it inside, so he didn't see much of the interior. It was sparse; he could tell that much.

Then he was on a narrow bed with a plum-colored comforter, and then he was asleep.

When he woke up the next morning, she was next to him.


End file.
